A preliminary review of the audit obtained by The Advocate Monday shows that, in the weeks after an Office of Operations employee handed the purchasing agent $3,149 in cash for some missing plows that an elected official asked about a day earlier -- the incident that launched the investigation -- a parks maintenance employee turned in $853 in cash and a traffic engineering employee turned in $760.

From 2006 to 2010, the city's contracted scrap dealer, Rubino Brothers, made at least 209 cash payments to the city for a total of $16,472. But city records do not reflect receipt of cash from 203 of the transactions, Kroll found.

Some money from scrap sales was deposited into the city's surplus property account instead of the scrap-metal account.

Rubino's initially said the city was paid only by check but a representative acknowledged some cash sales after Kroll found evidence of it.

Some purchase tickets for cash sales issued by Rubino's were not signed by the person who accepted the cash.

A representative of Rubino's told Kroll city employees sometimes asked to be paid in cash and, with cash transactions, scrap metal sometimes arrived in pickup trucks and other vehicles not typically used to deliver it.

A representative of LaJoie's Auto & Scrap Recycling in Norwalk said it is "not uncommon" for municipal workers "to be paid off the record for scrap" and turned up records for 14 cash payments to six likely Stamford city employees, according to Kroll. LaJoie's did not have surveillance photos to confirm the identities of the employees or records to confirm the metal belonged to the city.

Before 2007, the city had contracts with Rubino's going back to 1991 but they had no termination dates, making it unclear where scrap-metal was to be taken.

The audit explains some of the limits of the investigation, including that Kroll investigators could not review certain records because requesting them would have tipped off those being investigated.

Because of camera malfunctions, surveillance photos provided information for only 41 of the 209 cash transactions Kroll requested from Rubino's, and Kroll had to rely on the accuracy of records kept by Rubino's and LaJoie's since its investigators do not have the power to subpoena records and review them first-hand.

Board of Finance members will have plenty of questions at tonight's meeting, Chairman Gerald Bosak said. But he has a concern with identifying some of the city workers named in the audit.

Kroll interviewed three confidential informants who name city workers they said took scrap metal and sold it for cash. But two Stamford police investigations and a review by the state's attorney found no evidence to charge anyone with a crime, so the legal department is reviewing the audit to determine whether the accused workers' names should be protected, Bosak said.

"I believe the report should be open and the discussion about the report should be open, just as the police report was open," Bosak said. "But we want the legal department to go over it."

-- Angela Carella can be reached at 203-964-2296 or angela.carella@scni.com.